Friday, 25 November 2016

Crippling drought in Bolivia

Climate
Change Has Left Bolivia Crippled by Drought

Like
many countries, Bolivia relies on its glaciers and large lakes to
supply water during the lean, dry times. But as Bolivia has heated
with the rest of the world, those key stores of frozen and liquid
water have dwindled and dried up. Warming has turned the country’s
second largest lake into a parched bed of hardening soil. This heat
has made the country’s largest lake a shadow of its former expanse
and depth. It has forced Bolivia’s glaciers into a full retreat up
the tips of its northern mountains — reducing
the key Chacaltaya glacier to naught.
Multiple reservoirs are now bone-dry. And, for hundreds of thousands
of people, the only source of drinking water is from trucked-in
shipments.

As
emergency relief tankers wind through the streets and neighborhoods
of La Paz and El Alto, the government has established an emergency
water cabinet. Plans to build a more resilient system have been laid.
And foreign governments and companies have been asked for assistance.
But Bolivia’s larger problem stems from droughts that have been
made worse and worse by climate change. And it’s unclear whether
new infrastructure to manage water can deal with a situation that
increasingly removes the water altogether.

Dried
out Lakes, Dwindling Glaciers

Over
the years, worsening factors related to climate change have made
Bolivia vulnerable to any dry period that may come along. The added
effect of warming is that more rain has to fall to make up for the
resulting increased rate of evaporation. Meanwhile, glacial retreat
means that less
water melts and flows into streams and lakes during these hot, dry
periods.
In the end, this combined water loss creates a situation of drought
prevalence for the state. And when a dry period is set off by other
climate features — as happened with the strong El Nino that
occurred during 2014 to 2016 — droughts in Bolivia become
considerably more intense.

(In
this NASA satellite
shot of northern Bolivia taken on November 6, 2016, we find very thin
mountain snow and ice cover in upper center, a lake Titicaca that is
both now very low and filled with sand bars at upper left, and a
completely dried up lake Poopo at bottom-center. Bolivia relies on
these three sources of water. One is gone, and two more have been
greatly diminished. Scientists have found that global warming is
melting Bolivia’s glaciers and has increased evaporation rates by
as much as 200 percent near its key lakes. Image source: LANCE
MODIS.)

By
December, rains are expected to return and provide some relief for
Bolivia. El Nino has faded and 2017 shouldn’t be as dry as 2015 or
2016. However, like many regions around the world, the Bolivian
highlands are in a multi-year period of drought. And the over-riding
factor causing these droughts is not the periodic El Nino, but the
longer-term trend of warming that is melting Bolivia’s glaciers and
increasing rates of evaporation across its lakes.

In
context, the current drought emergency has taken place as global
temperatures hit near 1.2 degrees Celsius hotter than 1880s averages.
Current and expected future burning of fossil fuels will continue to
warm the Earth and add worsening drought stress to places like
Bolivia. So this particular emergency water shortage is likely to be
just one of many to come. And only an intense effort to reduce fossil
fuel emissions can substantially slake the worsening situation for
Bolivia and for numerous other drought-affected regions around the
world.

Blazes
have burnt 12,000 hectares, including five protected natural areas

Endangered
species under threat from fires that ‘took us by surprise’

Peru
has declared a state of emergency in seven districts in the north of
the country where forest fires have killed two, injured four and
burnt nearly 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres) of land, including five
protected natural areas.

Wildfires
have spread to 11 regions across the country, according to Peru’s
civil defence institute, in what scientists say may be the worst
drought in more than a decade.